How does one get rid of Obamacare? How badly does a broken immigration policy hurt the district? What is the best way to roll back federal spending and intrusion into state issues? As for President Obama, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria received more kind words.

But while the Republicans running to represent Alabama’s First Congressional District are in agreement on the core message, their styles vary, in some ways jarringly. And the outcome of Tuesday’s primary, though likely to be a function of turnout here, may provide some hints on how much further the Republican shift to the right might go.

There was a time when this primary would be automatic. The district, which surrounds Mobile Bay, was one of several in Alabama to vote Republican in 1964 when Barry Goldwater ran for president and Alabama was still a solidly Democratic state. For the nearly five decades since, it was represented by just three Republican congressmen, the first two publicly designating their successors and all three inclined to effective deal-making rather than fiery rhetoric.

Such a candidate in the past may have been Bradley Byrne, 58, a former state senator and the current front-runner, or perhaps Chad A. Fincher, 39, a two-term state legislator from Mobile’s conservative western suburbs. But with no heir apparent for the first time in 50 years, the full spectrum of conservatism is on display: from Mr. Byrne, who speaks sunnily of the country’s ability to overcome any of its current challenges, to Dean Young, a real estate developer and Tea Party favorite who describes the stakes of the election in far less optimistic terms.

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The primary field includes Bradley Byrne, a former state senator.Credit
Meggan Haller for The New York Times

“We are witnessing the end of a Western Christian empire,” Mr. Young, 49, said at the forum.

In addition to Mr. Byrne, Mr. Young and Mr. Fincher, the field includes Wells Griffith, 31, a hometown boy made good, who recently worked at the Republican National Committee and whose supporters see him as a direct line to Representative Paul D. Ryan and the other young prominent figures of the right; and Quin Hillyer, 49, a conservative journalist whose detailed policy analyses and list of endorsements testify to decades in the premier circles of the conservative movement.

Everyone expects a runoff, and the runoff could include any of these. The only candidate assumed to be a lock is Mr. Byrne, the best financed and most widely known.

Mr. Byrne, whose political career and support from the business community have marked him as the establishment candidate, is known statewide for a bruising race for governor in 2010. That Republican primary became a pitched battle between Mr. Byrne, who had the broad backing of Republican leaders, and Tim James, a staunch conservative and son of a former governor. Their fighting, and a nasty scrap Mr. Byrne got into with the teachers’ union, left voters cold and opened the way for another Republican, Robert J. Bentley, a mild-mannered dermatologist who now sits in the governor’s mansion.

This recent lesson about the wisdom of letting others do the attacking perhaps explains how well-mannered this primary has been so far.

But negativity lingers from the ad wars in 2010, including perceptions that Mr. Byrne, a Democrat until 1997, is insufficiently conservative. He, like the others, supports getting rid of the president’s health care law and has even proposed abolishing the Internal Revenue Service. But he talks repeatedly of spending on infrastructure and working with Congressional Democrats where possible. And, citing a huge investment by the aircraft maker Airbus that may transform Mobile, Mr. Byrne is surprisingly upbeat for a conservative running in these times.

“I think people are concerned,” he said in an interview at a campaign gathering for young professionals, many of them young men with good haircuts and pressed khakis. “But people don’t want to be angry. They want to be hopeful.”

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Dean Young, a real estate developer and Tea Party favorite, is another candidate.Credit
Meggan Haller for The New York Times

This may be an accurate read of the district. But in what is expected to be an election with very low turnout, it remains to be seen whether it is a good read of those at the polls. If not, the beneficiary may be Mr. Young.

Mr. Young, who made a serious run at Mr. Bonner in 2012 and has financed much of his own campaign this year, says he would vote against raising the debt ceiling, sees those who would compromise in Congress as “spineless” and boasts of support from Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court, a hero among the hard-right evangelicals who form Mr. Young’s base.

Supporters of the other candidates speak with a respectful and perhaps wary bewilderment about this base. Its electoral behavior often eludes pollsters and competitors, as Chief Justice Moore’s recent career illustrates.

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Famed for installing a Ten Commandments monument in the state judicial building in 2003, Chief Justice Moore ran for governor in 2010 and, to the surprise of many, received less than a fifth of the votes in the primary. Two years later he ran for chief justice and, to the surprise of many, won the primary without a runoff.

“If we get a 10 percent turnout, who knows what is going to happen,” said Lou Campomenosi, a political science professor at Tulane University who is involved in Alabama’s Tea Party movement. “That’s why I think Dean becomes the real wild card candidate, because he’s got this really fervent group behind him.”

An hour northeast of Mobile, Mr. Fincher was greeting voters at a fair in Atmore. In a condensed campaign, Mr. Fincher’s name recognition is a considerable advantage, and many believe that he is likely to meet Mr. Byrne in a runoff.

At the fair, Mr. Fincher talked of concerns about an out-of-control federal government and a loss of Christian values, a message that resonated with people sitting nearby and picking at barbecued ribs.

But concern just might not be a strong enough word.

“I think Barack Obama is the worst thing that’s ever happened to this country,” said Stoney Daw, 72, a former federal law enforcement officer and now a small town police chief. “I don’t know if we can survive three more years.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 22, 2013, on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Alabama Primary Puts a Wide Spectrum of Republican Views on Display. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe